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Amerikajin no zu Title: Picture of Americans Artist: Yoshikazu (fl. ca. 1850-70) 1861:2 Format: Woodblock print Medium: Ink and color on paper Dimensions: 35.6 x24.3 cm (14 x9 9/16 in.) Source: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution The caption to the right of the title reads, "bread-baking oven." A man places a large loaf into the oven while another tends the food cooking in the skillets and pots on a stove in the foreground. Japanese and Western culinary techniques and ingredients initially had little in common, and many of the first Americans and Europeans to arrive in Japan longed for their familiar staples. United States Consul General Townsend Harris (1804-1878), during his long stay in isolated Shimoda, was frequently presented with fresh boar meat but nevertheless despaired when the provisions he had brought, including cured hams, ran out. Few Westerners in Yokohama seem to have acclimated to Japanese foods. Instead, they continued to eat a typical Western diet of meats provided by animals raised for the purpose, or by game that was abundant in the countryside around Yokohama. The shogunate's ban on hunting became routinely violated by the foreigners. [Adapted from Ann Yonemura, Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan] Visualizing Cultures image number: Y0102 Keywords: Westerners, food |
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